The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Footnote to History, by Robert Louis
Stevenson

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Title: A Footnote to History
Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Release Date: April 26, 2005 [eBook #536]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY***

Transcribed from the 1912 Swanston edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY
EIGHT YEARS OF TROUBLE IN SAMOA
by Robert Louis Stevenson

PREFACE

An affair which might be deemed worthy of a note of a few lines in any
general history has been here expanded to the size of a volume or large
pamphlet. The smallness of the scale, and the singularity of the manners
and events and many of the characters, considered, it is hoped that, in
spite of its outlandish subject, the sketch may find readers. It has
been a task of difficulty. Speed was essential, or it might come too
late to be of any service to a distracted country. Truth, in the midst
of conflicting rumours and in the dearth of printed material, was often
hard to ascertain, and since most of those engaged were of my personal
acquaintance, it was often more than delicate to express. I must
certainly have erred often and much; it is not for want of trouble taken
nor of an impartial temper. And if my plain speaking shall cost me any
of the friends that I still count, I shall be sorry, but I need not be
ashamed.

In one particular the spelling of Samoan words has been altered; and the
characteristic nasal _n_ of the language written throughout _ng_ instead
of _g_. Thus I put Pango-Pango, instead of Pago-Pago; the sound being
that of soft _ng_ in English, as in _singer_, not as in _finger_.

R. L. S.
VAILIMA,
UPOLU,
SAMOA.

CHAPTER I--THE ELEMENTS OF DISCORD: NATIVE

The story I have to tell is still going on as I write; the characters are
alive and active; it is a piece of contemporary history in the most exact
sense. And yet, for all its actuality and the part played in it by mails
and telegraphs and iron war-ships, the ideas and the manners of the
native actors date bac